Monday, August 31, 2009

The crisis over the Swedish newspaper article claiming IDF soldiers killed Palestinians and snatched their organs refuses to fade away, with Sweden's Foreign Minister denying a report that his country would work together with Italy to pass a resolution condemning anti-Semitism at an upcoming informal meeting of European foreign ministers. Monday's Haaretz quoted Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini as saying that he and Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt agreed to work to pass a resolution saying that the EU, under the Swedish Presidency, strongly condemned anti-Semitism and would work against its manifestations in Europe.Frattini, according to the paper, said he would demand that the statement make clear reference to the offensive Aftonbladet article. Later in the day, however, the Swedish news agency TT quoted Bildt - currently on a trip to Kabul - as denying that he discussed with Frattini a possible resolution to the Israeli-Swedish friction at the upcoming meeting.More...jpost.com

Sunday, August 30, 2009

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JPOST CORRESPONDENT IN BERLINHigh-ranking domestic and foreign intelligence officials in Germany tend to be attorneys. But Ernst Uhrlau, the head of Germany's Foreign Intelligence Service (BND), is a political scientist who has a long history in German law enforcement.According to media reports, Uhrlau last week bounced around the Middle East like a ping-pong ball to mediate efforts among Israeli, Egyptian, and Syrian diplomats over the release of captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit.Uhrlau took the reins of the BND in 2005. He has mediated some of the most dramatic prisoner swaps to have taken place between Israel and Hizbullah. Uhrlau assigned one of his top agents - whose real name is not known but he is referred to as Gerhard Konrad - last year to mediate the exchange of IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, who were murdered by Hizbullah in 2006, for convicted murderer Samir Kuntar as well as Hizbullah fighters.The swap went through, but raised criticisms of Israel's willingness to grant deep concessions to Hizbullah.More...jpost.com

Saturday, August 29, 2009

On October 28, 2008, activists of STOP THE BOMB protested in and in front of the University of Vienna against the appearance of former Iranian President Mohammed Chatami, who justifies death penalty for homosexuals, stood up for holocaust-denier Roger Garaudy, defended the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and called Israel "an old, incurable wound in the body of Islam, which has demoniac, stinky and infectious blood." As a result, 11 of the protesters were incriminated of obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty, attempted breach of domestic peace as well as one of them was accused of grievous bodily harm to a police officer. The proceedings now ended with the verdicts of not guilty and an Amicable Arrangement with the main defendant.In his reasons for the judgment, Judge Norbert Gerstberger described Chatami as a "high representative of a clerical-fascist, inhuman regime". The protesters motives "are comprehensible since the most important representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran have repeatedly denied the Holocaust in world public and threatened Israel with nuclear annihilation. Demonstrations against a representative of such a regime are hence to be called honourable." The activists of STOP THE BOMB were capable of "setting a public example which was in sharp contrast to the reception of Mohammed Chatami by the Austrian president, who - apparently in consideration of Austria's economic interests - had met with Chatami before his appearance at the University. It must not be overlooked, that the University of Vienna is a place of discussion and critical dispute, therefore the imagination, that important representatives of dictatorial systems are allowed to speak without contradiction, abuts on intolerableness."Vienna daily Die Presse about the verdict:Demonstration against former president Chatami at the University of Vienna termed 'honorable' protest by regional court.Vienna. They were roughly 25 protesters. Equipped with whistles, they attempted to storm the small festival room at the University of Vienna in late October 2008. The activists, associated with the group "STOP THE BOMB" that steps up against Iran's nuclear program, protested against a lecture by Iran's former president Mohammed Chatami. This entailed charges for breach of domestic peace and for obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty.The lawsuit against principal defendant Simone Hartmann has now been closed by a judge at the regional court of Vienna, leaving her with a fine of 350 Euros. Judge Norbert Gerstberger chose pithy words for his explanation: Chatami is the representative of a "clerical fascist system". Such a protest is hence "to be called honourable". Even Austrian president Heinz Fischer got his share: "The defendant managed to set a public example by her actions, which was in stark contrast to the reception of Mohammed Chatami by the Austrian president, who - apparently in consideration of Austria's economic interests - had met with Chatami." ("Die Presse", Print-Edition 25.07.2009)

Friday, August 28, 2009

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JPOST CORRESPONDENT IN BERLINThe publicly funded Multicultural Center's (Werkstatt der Kulturen) decision to remove educational panels of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, who was an ally of Adolf Hitler, from a planned exhibit, sparked outrage on Thursday among a district mayor, the curator of the exhibit, and the Berlin Jewish community.The curator, Karl Rössler, told The Jerusalem Post that it is a "scandal" that the director of the Werkstatt, Philippa Ebéné, sought to censor the exhibit."One must, of course, name that al-Husseini, a SS functionary, participated in the Holocaust," said Rössler. The exhibit covers the "The Third World during the Second World War" and three exhibit panels of 96 are devoted to the mufti's collaboration with the Nazis.The grand mufti delivered a talk to the imams of the Bosnian SS division in 1944, and was a key Islamic supporter of Nazi Germany's destruction of European Jewry.Ebéné denied that there was an "agreement " reached with the local German-Muslim community to shut down the exhibit. She termed media queries regarding an agreement as "Eurocentric."More...jpost.com

by John RosenthalNearly eight million euros. Or more than eleven million dollars at the current exchange rate.That is the total amount of subsidies that Quentin Tarantino received from German public sources for his Inglourious Basterds. The exact breakdown is as follows: €6.8 million from the German Film Fund, plus €600,000 and €300,000 respectively from the Media-Board of Berlin-Brandenburg and the so-called Middle German Film Fund. The German Film Fund (DFFF) is directly attached to the German government’s Ministry of Culture (or, more fully, Ministry of Culture and Media). Tarantino’s haul is even greater than the €4.8 million in subsidies that the German government contributed to the making of the historical revisionist thriller Valkyrie starring Tom Cruise.Moreover, the German contribution to Inglourious Basterds appears to have been far more than just financial. Of course, there are the numerous German actors in the cast and the many technical contributions of Babelsberg Studio, where much of the film was shot. But there is even more than that. Although Tarantino himself, as befits a celebrated “auteur,” is the sole writer credited for the script, Tarantino’s German collaborators appear to have also made a very considerable contribution to the story and dialogue. A large part of the dialogue, after all, is in German. Some is also in French. The French dialogue, however, is invariably trite and almost entirely lacking in local cultural references. It could readily be the product of simple translation and appears to be just that.The same cannot be said for the German dialogue. The German dialogue displays the linguistic robustness of the real German spoken by real German speakers. Moreover, the scenes in German abound with cultural references that only a native German or an expert in German studies would even get.More...pajamasmedia.com

Ah, the exquisite complexity of Islam eludes yet another Muslim, Kadir T., who somehow gets the Islamophobic idea that he has a religious responsibility to wage war against unbelievers. Will the Islamophobia never end?More...jihadwatch.org

Thursday, August 27, 2009

by Benjamin WeinthalThe Federal Republic of Germany has named 10 members to its first-ever government commission to combat antisemitism.The pressing question is whether the commission members will remain stuck in the past and devote their energies to fighting a largely obsolete form of Jew hatred: Nazi-style biological and racial antisemitism? Or will they address the gravest threats to Jews in Germany, which are Muslim antisemitism and that version dressed up as anti-Israel activity?Dr Juliane Wetzel, a commission member who works for the controversial Berlin Centre for the study of antisemitism, seemed to confirm the concerns.She said in the liberal-left daily, Die Taz, that the greatest danger of antisemitism comes from the extreme right and that she does not want to make hostility to Jews among German Muslims into an issue.However, this is not the reality on the ground. At the beginning of this year, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, Germany experienced a tidal wave of anti-Jewish demonstrations. Over 100,000 German-Muslims participated in protests across Germany where chants of “kill, kill Jews” and “kill, kill Israelis” were commonplace.More...thejc.com

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has told The Associated Press he is seeking evidence that the U.S. facilitated arms shipments from Iran to Bosnian Muslims during the Bosnian war. Karadzic’s war crimes trial is likely to ...More...SERBIANNA

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT BERLINAfter Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak alluded last week in Washington that German diplomats are mediating negotiations for the release of IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, Germany would "neither confirm nor deny" such involvement, a spokesman for German chancellor Angela Merkel told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.More...jpost.com

by John RosenthalIt has not been a good summer for the German Social Democratic party (SPD) and its chancellor candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier. With five weeks remaining before the German general elections, all the polling data continues to shows the Social Democrats badly trailing the rival Christian Democrats of Chancellor Angela Merkel.More...newmajority.com

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Major James M. Inks, seated, with copies of the 1954 first edition of Eight Bailed Out, published by W.W. Norton.

By Carl SavichOn July 28, 1944, eight members of a Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber bailed out over German-occupied Yugoslavia after the plane sustained damaged following a bombing mission on the Ploesti oil installations in Romania. The American crew landed by parachute behind enemy lines in German-occupied Montenegro where they were rescued by Serbian Chetnik guerrillas, who hid the downed airmen from German troops. The Chetnik guerrillas attempted to return the rescued fliers to their base in Italy. The navigator of the bomber, Lieutenant James M. Inks (1920-2004) of Llano, Texas, kept a diary of the ten and a half months spent in the “protective custody” of the Chetnik guerrillas as they sought to escape from German troops. Inks spent three months with guerrilla leader General Draza Mihailovich at his headquarters in Loznica in Serbia. Inks provided an invaluable personal account of the final months of World War II in Yugoslavia. He proffered his appraisal and assessment of the Serbian guerrilla movement led by Mihailovich and the policy of the U.S. and Britain towards his resistance movement.More...

Monday, August 24, 2009

by John RosenthalLast week, a German court in Munich found the 90-year-old former Wehrmacht officer Josef Scheungraber guilty on ten charges of murder for his role in a massacre of Italian civilians in the town of Falzano di Cortona in June 1944 during the Second World War.*The case has invited comparisons to that of John Demjanjuk: the 89-year-old former Ohio resident who was expelled to Germany earlier this year. Demjanjuk is facing charges in the same Munich court on nearly 28,000 counts of murder in connection with his alleged activity as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland. As discussed in my earlier PJM report here, Germany’s avid pursuit of Demjanjuk creates the impression that German authorities are vigilant about prosecuting Nazi war crimes. Especially in light of the defendant’s similarly advanced age, the conviction of Josef Scheungraber reinforces this impression.More...pajamasmedia.com

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, will seek to put western powers on trial for the break-up of the former Yugoslavia as he prepares to defend himself against charges of war crimes and genocide.In a written interview with the Financial Times, Mr Karadzic said he had already begun “requesting information from countries such as Germany, France, [the] United Kingdom and the United States” that he claimed would detail how they had put their strategic self-interest ahead of peace for Balkan ethnic groups.More...serbianna.com/blogs/michaletos

Saturday, August 22, 2009

“As long as Bosnia’s War Crimes Prosecution is dominated by David Schwendiman [PDF], not a single Bosnian Muslim general will find himself in the docket, regardless of the evidence proving their responsibility for war crimes committed by the Bosnian Muslim forces against the Serb population,” Dževad Galijašević, member of the South-Eastern Europe’s Expert Team for the War Against Terrorism and Organized Crime, told Banja Luka daily Fokus.Born into the Muslim faith, former mayor of Maglaj Municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina Galijašević is one of the very few Bosnian Muslims willing to openly speak about the wide scale war crimes committed by the Izetbegović’s troops in former Yugoslavia.Author of three books, including The Era of Terrorism in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Galijašević asserts that Alija Izetbegović’s Islamic Declaration “laid the cornerstone for the mujahidin to come to wartime and postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina”.He stresses that the current Islamic political leadership of Bosnia are the “same people who during the war sent pleas to the Taliban and other Islamic regimes to send their best jihad fighters to Bosnia to fight the Christians”. After the war has ended, the response of these leaders to anyone who would bring up the fact of war crimes committed by the Bosnian Muslims is that only the foreign fighters are responsible for war crimes on the Muslim side and none of the natives.This, says Galijašević, couldn’t be further from the truth.More...

Eurabia Alert: The ringleaders evidently began their "journey of radicalization" in Bonn. "Anti-German Jihadist videos flood internet," from The Local, August 21:With just over a month to go before Germany's general election, daily newspaper Die Welt reported on Friday that an unprecedented number of Islamist videos encouraging holy war against the country have flooded the internet.More...jihadwatch.org

Friday, August 21, 2009

"And because she was 'already so disfigured from the stabbing and beating that she would hate me for the rest of her life,' he got into his car and ran over her body several times."More...jihadwatch.org

Thursday, August 20, 2009

During the past two decades, Serbia has been placed under a heavy magnifying glass by the West (or the “international community”, as Western politicians and their media prefer to call themselves), persistently scrutinized for any trace of deviation from an imposed political ideal.The tenacious supervision, largely crafted upon the demented Soros’ postulates (of absolute rights for sexual, ethnic and all the other minorities, even when they are trampling the basic rights of the majority in states targeted for destruction) is particularly boorish — oftentimes reaching the bizarre proportions of undisguised totalitarianism — in regards to the treatment of countless minorities in Serbia.All along, however, the human rights of Serbs in Serbia and outside, although continuously and viciously trampled, remain ignored.While they were being accused for all the ills and evils surrounding the U.S.-led campaign for destruction of former Yugoslavia and Serbia, Serbian nation as a collective was silently stripped of the rights generally afforded to all the UN members under the international law.From that moment, every harm and injustice done to Serbs by the Western states and their regional allies was permitted, and none of the international institutions, starting with United Nations, over the OSCE, Red Cross and numerous “human rights” organizations, all the way to the international courts — real (ICJ) or fake (ICTY) — would do anything to stop merciless devouring and destruction of the Serbian people, land and state.More...

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

The article in Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet accusing Israeli soldiers of stealing and selling the organs of Palestinians is not a surprise or isolated aberration, but rather the result of a long campaign of anti-Israeli demonization, based on manufactured "evidence" repeated by Palestinian "eyewitnesses". Applying the strategy adopted at the NGO forum of the 2001 UN Durban conference, the well-financed network of radical non-governmental organizations (NGOs) plays a major role in this demonization, and the Swedish government is a major source of funding. Expressions of modern anti-Semitism and blood libels are the logical results of this activity.More...jpost.com

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The Iranians have something of a fetish for German engineering. German trade with Iran totaled roughly 4 billion euro in 2008. According to Michael Tockuss, the former president of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce in Tehran, “Some two-thirds of Iranian industry relies on German engineering products.” If anything, trade between Germany and Iran has been booming. In the past six months, the petrochemical company Basell Polyolefine signed an 825 million euro contract to supply the technology to build three new plants in Iran. And the Bavarian energy company Bayerngas signed a joint venture agreement with the National Iranian Gas Company to build refineries, supply equipment, and develop a network of gas stations.More...achgut.com

Monday, August 17, 2009

by Thomas LandenThe Federal Republic of Germany is a democracy. It is no fun, however, to be a Baptist in Germany. For the past two decades, the German authorities have been clamping down on Baptists who want to raise their children in accordance with their religious principles. In Germany, the state rather than the parents, is considered to be primarily responsible for the well-being of children. Hence, the draconian measures taken against...More...hudsonny.org

Saturday, August 15, 2009

by John RosenthalWith general elections upcoming in Germany on September 27, many signs suggest that the Social Democrats are prepared to enter into a coalition with a party which includes remnants of the former East German Communist Party.More...newmajority.com

Friday, August 14, 2009

Felicia Langer was not awarded the "Federal Merit Cross, First Class" despite her anti-Israeli invective, but precisely because of it.by John RosenthalLast month, Germany awarded one of its highest honors, the “Federal Merit Cross, First Class,” to the Israeli lawyer and political activist Felicia Langer. The Merit Cross is awarded by the German president, currently Horst Köhler, for “special contributions to the Federal Republic of Germany.” A former member of the Central Committee of the Israeli Communist Party, Langer is known in Germany, above all, as a ferocious critic of Israel. She has lived in Germany since 1990.By her own account, Langer left Israel out of protest and she has said that she made “a politically conscious choice for Germany … because I understood with what brutality and sophistication Israel was exploiting the Germans’ guilt.” In numerous public statements in books, lectures, and interviews, she has, among other things, called for war-crimes trials against Israeli leaders, dismissed Palestinian suicide bombings as the consequence of “suicidal desperation,” and endorsed the charge that Israelis were behaving like a “master race.” Coy comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany are indeed a regular part of Langer’s repertoire. (For a selection of translated quotes, see here.)The news of Langer’s award has prompted incredulous reactions from both Israeli officials and officials of Germany’s leading Jewish organization, the publicly-funded Central Council of Jews in Germany. It has also prompted other Jewish recipients of the Merit Cross, in both Germany and Israel, to threaten to return their awards in protest if Langer’s award is not rescinded.According to an article in the Jerusalem Post, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, has suggested that the “decision [to honor Langer] was not properly researched.” A closer look at the circumstances surrounding the award, however, reveals this relatively benign explanation to be wishful thinking at best.More...pajamasmedia.com

Thursday, August 13, 2009

by John RosenthalThus, in January 2005, the then so-called "EU Constitution" or, more exactly, Constitutional Treaty was moving through the ratification process and facing potential defeat in upcoming referendums in several EU member states. In order to try to defuse -- or perhaps discredit -- the increasingly evident public opposition to the treaty, a group of pro-Constitution members of the European Parliament announced that they were setting up a "rapid reaction force" to correct "distortions and misrepresentations" of the treaty.The members of the group would serve as the "watchdogs on utterances about the Constitution," as the news site EUobserver chillingly put it, citing the head of the parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee Jo Leinen. "Within three hours, or at least within the same day, we want to react to lies and distortions about the Constitution," the German MEP told EUobserver. No "snitching" was required by members of the public themselves. Rather, the task of policing public discourse was assigned to the European Parliament offices in each of the member states, which were to "'pick up' any information they consider to be a lie and pass it back to the group."In the press release announcing the program, Leinen noted that the "Rapid Reaction Force" was being created "to publicly counter distortions and misrepresentations of the Constitution" (emphasis in the original). And he added:In this decisive phase, the opponents of the European idea should not be given the chance to lead their countries into isolation and a political dead-end through their opposition to the European Constitution....(The press release is no longer available on Leinen's website, but it can still be found in saved versions of the site available in the Internet Archive.)More...spectator.org

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

by John RosenthalWhich German politician said the following? “As a citizen, I would not like again to become the object of Anglo-Saxon financial capital. Germany does not protect me from this, but only Germany in Europe does.”More...newmajority.com

Yet another convert misunderstands his peaceful new religion, and yet Honest Ibe Hooper and Brave Ahmed Rehab of CAIR have still made no move, and no Muslim spokesmen or authorities have made any move, toward crafting a program to instruct converts in the true, peaceful and tolerant Islam. Now, why is that?More...jihadwatch.org

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

by Benjamin WeinthalLast week, the German Interior Ministry announced the members of a commission to address anti-Semitism in the Federal Republic. Dr. Juliane Wetzel, a researcher at the controversial Berlin Center for Anti-Semitism Research, is a permanent member of the commission.By way of background, the Center's callous behavior toward Iranian genocidal anti-Semitism directed at Israel sparked an outcry among Jews and non-Jews around the world last year.Political scientist Dr. Daniel J. Goldhagen, an academic who has written extensively about German "eliminationist antisemitism" and who spoke then with The Jerusalem Post regarding the Center's approach to the study of anti-Semitism was highly critical. While the Post quoted Dr. Goldhagen in its initial story on the Center, a number of his statements did not appear in the report due to space limitations.More...jpost.com

Monday, August 10, 2009

Von Wedel already crossed swords with his agency superiors over the fate of the Colombian informant, but his real troubles began in fall 2001 following the 9/11 attacks. Von Wedel recalls the “red lights flashing” at bka headquarters in Wiesbaden as it emerged that the attacks had been organized by a German-based Islamic terror cell: “‘What did we do wrong?’ we asked, ‘How could we prevent further attacks being plotted from Germany?’” There followed a period of what von Wedel describes as “hyperactivity” on the part of German law enforcement agencies. But far from preventing further attacks, barely over one year later, on October 12, 2002, a suicide bombing and a follow-up blast would kill some 202 people on the Indonesian resort island of Bali in what remains the single deadliest al Qaeda attack since 9/11 — and yet again there was a major German connection. The reputed financier of …More...achgut.com

Sunday, August 09, 2009

by John RosenthalBy repeatedly taxing the Yugoslav government with human rights violations in Kosovo in her capacity as UN high commissioner, Robinson herself massively contributed to the public “legitimacy” enjoyed by NATO’s aerial war against Yugoslavia in 1999. But, as it happens, that war was conducted without any UN Security Council mandate.More...pajamasmedia.com

The Germans – as is well-known - only want the best for the Jews. Since they were stopped by the Allies – even though too late –from succeeding with their project to rid the world of the “Jewish bacillus” (A. Hitler), they feel particularly “responsible” for the well-being of the citizens of the State of Israel because of “the history”. Therefore there is manifold German-Israeli cooperation in the fields of education, economy, culture, and more recently, owing to Angela Merkel, once again in the military sector. From this cooperation the Germans deduce that they are “friends” of the Israeli people, namely – because of “the history” – very “special” ones. And good friends - Günter Grass and Joschka Fischer already knew that - have to tell each other if something is wrong. And that is what happens: The Germans don’t like the fact that Israel defends itself against its enemies at all. As the Germans have learned from "history" that wars lead to ugly results, they advise their Israeli friends to try solving their problems by means of a dialogue – they even offer help with that since they know exactly what is going on in the Arab Nazis’ minds – due to “history”. Israel sometimes accepts this offer, but at the same time it doesn’t abstain from more effective methods of defending the country (just like some people use homeopathic products, but when it gets serious they prefer orthodox medicine), thereby annoying its German friends: For the stubborn Jews do not just resist the German proposals, but are in fact, as 59% of the Germans know, the major threat to “world peace”. And world peace means even more to the Germans than the Jews do.More...

Friday, August 07, 2009

by sheikyermamiWhen it comes down to Allah or Soccer in Germany Allah will lose, Big Time!(But don’t take my word for it… political correctness in Germany is more trouble than AIDS. Just keep in mind that this hymn is sung since 1924, which means the song has 85, 86 years of tradition. One would hope the Germans don’t let it go without a fight…)More...

Thursday, August 06, 2009

by Julia GorinThe executive European Commission plans to unveil on Wednesday a proposal to allow citizens of Serbia, as well as those of Montenegro and Macedonia, to travel to the European Union without visas from the start of next year.It says a similar proposal covering Bosnia and Albania could follow in mid-2010 — once they meet EU standards.…Schwarz-Schilling, a former German minister and high representative in Bosnia from 2006 to 2007, told the German newspaper Bild it was “an incredible political blunder” to exclude Bosnia, a country NATO, the United States and the EU had taken military action to defend.More...juliagorin.com

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Geert Wilders, an international champion of free speech, is barred from Britain, but a Jew-hating Islamic supremacist is just fine with UK authorities. Absurd Britannia Alert: "Anti-Semitic Saudi chief imam feted in London: Senior cleric of Mecca's Grand Mosque speaks at East London Mosque," ...More...jihadwatch.org

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

You mean...Muhammad did know about soccer? "The song with the title 'White and Blue, How I Love You' has been around for decades but only recently came to the attention of Turkish media which said it insults the Prophet." And of course that means that the West must once again bend. More...

German football club Schalke and their management are busy doing damage control and public relations work after a curious threat of protests and massive outrage over the team’s club song. The Bundesliga club is getting waves of protest emails, boycott threats and petitions after the German Muslim community began venting their anger over a passage of the club’s song they feel is blasphemous.Here is the song, translated into English as it appears on the club’s website.Blue and White

Blue and white, how I love youBlue and white, forever trueBlue and white is just like heaven bornBlue and white are the colours we have always worn

If we had a kingdom for us to makeIt would resemble Schalke and no mistakeAll the girls, oh so young and fairWould sport a blue and white ribbon tied up in her hair

Mohammed was a prophet whoKnew nothing of football, that much is trueBut of all the colours shining brightThe ones he thought up were our royal blue and white

A thousand fires in the nightHave brought us lots of pleasure and delightA thousand friends all standing side by sideWill make sure FC Schalke will never die

In bold is the passage in question.

The boycotts have been threatened if club officials do not change the part of the song deemed insulting to the feelings of Muslim. An unnamed Schalke spokesman vowed to take the accusations seriously, saying the club plans to hire an Islam expert to investigate the blasphemous charge.

Monday, August 03, 2009

Europe’s top human rights watchdog is launching a probe into Serb allegations that ethnic Albanian guerrillas kidnapped Serb civilians during Kosovo’s war, removed their organs and sold the body parts on the black ...More...

Sunday, August 02, 2009

by Joachim SteinhöfelThe TFTP is an invaluable tool in discovering links to terror cells. Too bad the German media chooses to ignorantly demonize it.In the last few days, the German media and German politicians have been on an angry rampage against America’s Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP). The cause for their agitation are reports that the EU plans to continue permitting U.S. intelligence agencies access to some of the bank transfer data stored by the inter-bank network SWIFT.“In a ‘blitz’ action,” the margin of maneuver of U.S. terror-investigators is supposed to have been “massively extended.” The talk is of “highly-sensitive bank data” and of “American snoops [Schnüfflern]” who will be permitted “to spy on the entire range of transactions.” There is supposedly no dependable legal basis for the program and one “fears abuse.” All of the above according to Spiegel Online in an article titled “EU Allows the U.S. to Spy on Bank Accounts”.On the nightly news on Germany’s ZDF public television, star news presenter Klaus Kleber felt that it was relevant to inform his audience that the SWIFT server in the USA is located “right nearby” the CIA headquarters. ZDF’s “terrorism expert” Elmar Theveßen could placidly affirm that only a single arrest had ever been facilitated by the program.More...pajamasmedia.com

Saturday, August 01, 2009

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JPOST CORRESPONDENT IN BERLINAlexander Ritzmann, a senior fellow at The European Foundation for Democracy, and author of a study on "Hizbullah's Fund-raising Organization in Germany," issued earlier this month, said the Orphans Project Lebanon (Waisenkinderprojekt Libanon e.V.), situated in Göttingen, Lower Saxony, is "the German branch of a Hizbullah sub-organization" which "promotes suicide bombings" and seeks to destroy Israel.According to Ritzmann's 23-page analysis on the inner workings of Hizbullah n Germany, "financial donations to the Orphans Project Lebanon are tax deductible and are therefore subsidized by the German state."When asked on Thursday about donors and donations to the Orphans Project, Ritzmann told The Jerusalem Post that the tax authority declined to disclose information based on privacy laws.More...